A Lo-Fi, DIY Sci-Fi Film That's Better Than Its Big-Budget Brethren

Last summer, the actor Jay Duplass found himself in the middle of a lush forest in Washington state, his body struggling under the weight of a giant space-helmet. The actor was filming scenes for the sci-fi drama Prospect, in which he plays a planet-scavenger hoping to get rich. Duplass' otherworldly get-up—like nearly all of the film's costume and props—had been designed and hand-made by a team of earthbound artists. But while his beat-up headgear looked cool, wearing it was "a goddamn nightmare," the actor says. "It was heavy. Those helmets are not designed to be worn all day, or walked around in. It messed my neck up for a good six months."

Such sacrifices were a near-daily requirement on Prospect, which opens this Friday in select cities, and expands next week. It's a defiantly DIY indie, one that takes place in a richly designed sci-fi world, full of gonzo weapons, clunky spaceships, and lived-in locales—yet focuses largely on three primary characters. "The insane ambition was to try to capture the essence of huge movies like Dune, Star Wars, and Blade Runner," says co-writer and co-director Zeek Earl. "We tried to capture a slice of a world, but with a very low budget."

That task required Earl and his partner, Chris Caldwell—both making their feature-film debut—to spend much of last year in a Seattle workshop, where they constructed their own on-screen galaxy. The 31-year-old filmmakers had first produced Prospect as a short film, which drew attention after premiering at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival, ultimately becoming a hit on Vimeo. Afterward, the two former Seattle Pacific University students toured Hollywood, trying to sell producers on a full-length Prospect. "It was a startlingly long process," says Caldwell. "But we were pitching a very unique production plan." The duo wanted seven months to make the film's ships, costumes, and weapons—an almost unheard-of amount of prep time for an indie. "Most people were like, 'Oh. Cool,'" remembers Earl. "They were clearly thinking, 'This doesn't fit in to how things work.'"

Earl and Caldwell finally secured financing from Canadian company BRON Studios (the film's budget, Earl says, came in under $4 million). In late 2016, they got to work, moving into a former ship-building warehouse in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, where they were sandwiched between an Episcopal bookstore and a marijuana dispensary. "We hired a lot of people who'd never worked on a movie before: industrial designers, carpenters, mechanics, cosplayers," says Caldwell. "They were working with us as the script was being written, and by the time we got the green light, we had this kind of art collective under one roof."

Working-Class Grunts of the Future

It was a fittingly hands-on environment for a sci-fi tale that focuses not on aerial battles or inter-world politics, but on the day-to-day life of the working-class grunts of the future. Prospect casts Duplass as Damon, a small-time explorer who lands his dinged-up spaceship on a gorgeous but toxic moon, accompanied by his young daughter, Cee (played by Chicago Med’s Sophie Thatcher). They've landed a contract to collect elusive, oyster-like gems, with a potential payday big enough to get their lives back on track. But the family's search is interrupted by a mysterious traveler (Game of Thrones and Narcos alum Pedro Pascal) who's just as desperate as they are. What follows is a slow-boiling showdown with hints of noir-westerns like Deadwood and The Treasure of Sierra Madre, albeit with bulky air-filtration devices and gnarly spear-guns instead of whiskey and pistols.

All of Prospect's exterior shots were filmed on a private land trust adjacent to Washington's Olympic National Park, where Earl and Caldwell had backpacked during college. "A few times," says Earl, "Fish and Wildlife officials would wander in and see a bunch of people in space helmets, and get really confused." They probably overheard some mild gasps from the actors, as well, as they were spending hours in the meticulously designed gear. "Their airflow was restricted, and we were making them hike all over the forest," says Earl. "It was pretty arduous."

CGI would have made everyone's lives easier, of course: In mega-budgeted sci-fi films like The Martian, the performers’ costumes—including helmet visors—are often created with digital assistance. But everything in Prospect had to at least appear fully functional, in order to amplify the film's realism. Back in the filmmakers' warehouse, which also served as a film studio and editing bay, the production team used a CNC (Computer Numeric Control) kit to create much of the ship's interiors. "We spent a week figuring out how to put it together," says Caldwell, "so that we could design all these sets digitally, and just cut them out." Even the particles of poisonous dust that flutter across the moon-forest were the result of practical effects: Earl threw dust around the basement of his home, filmed it, and overlaid the results into the finished movie.

That analog approach makes Prospect its own sort of satellite in the world of recent science-fiction films. It's a big-screen genre dominated by well-known properties and steroidal budgets: Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ready Player One, The Predator. But there's always been a place for cerebral, less showy tales of futures yet to come, from George Lucas’ dystopic THX-1138 to Shane Carruth’s time-traveling Primer to Duncan Jones’ far-flung Moon. After its premiere at SXSW this year, Prospect was picked up for distribution by DUST, a sci-fi-focused division of the indie company Gunpowder & Sky. The imagination found within next-wave sci-fi stories like Prospect—and the determination of studios willing to back them—hints at not only an alternative world, but also an alternative Hollywood, one where big ideas are just as important as big budgets. "I've never been a fan of large spectacle sci-fi, or large spectacle movies in general, because I feel like they almost always drop the ball on character and emotion," says Duplass. Growing up, the actor's sci-fi tastes gravitated toward movies like the scaled-back 1985 drama Enemy Mine. "It's a weird little chamber piece about two enemies who are stranded, and rely on each other to survive," he says.

Prospect has some of that same weird-little-movie vibe, though it hints at much larger stories just beyond the moon planet's horizon. After the movie's debut, Amazon approached Earl and Caldwell about developing a TV sci-fi series, one that would employ "the same apparatus" the duo used for Prospect, Earl says. They said yes, and a pilot is currently in the works. A piece of advice for prospective actors: Bring your own headgear.